Sunday in Auke Bay

Because Statter Harbor in Auke Bay, northwest of Juneau’s downtown harbors, is closer than is Douglas Harbor to the ferry terminal from which we’ll depart on Wednesday for a trip to Skagway, and to a Fred Meyer store where I need to pick up a prescription, and to a COSTCO, and to a laundromat, we decided to spend about 4.5 hours today (July 31) motoring there. The distance is about 30 miles by sea because of the need to go southeast from Douglas Harbor, around the tip of Douglas Island, and then back up the western side of the island to Auke Bay on the Alaska coast. We traveled, with the assistance of radar and our horn, through heaps of fog and short bursts of rain, and I was again kept busy with windscreen clearing duties. The harbor in Auke Bay can be a difficult one in which to find a berth because of heavy fishing boat and tourist boat traffic, but we were told that a number of boats were out of the harbor today, and we were able to find a spot right away and to dock without difficulty.

After dinner, we cleaned out and defrosted the refrigerator and freezer and repacked and organized their contents, and on Monday we hope to shop and do the laundry. I have managed to catch up my email reading and blog post writing, but I wasn’t able to photograph the mountains and waterfalls near downtown Juneau, or other scenes, because of persistent fog and rain; I’m therefore adding a few photos from our Tracy Arm travels, when the weather was superb.